Over 100 Minnesota Youth Lobby for a Clean Energy Future

On a nearly snowless early February day, over 100 high school youth from the Will Steger Foundation’s Youth Environmental Activists (YEA! MN) program participated in the Clean Energy & Jobs “Day on the Hill,” lobbying their state legislators and meeting with Governor Dayton to discuss how climate change will impact their future.

Climate Ride 2015

Climate Minnesota: Local Stories, Community Solutions

This April we will host two Climate Minnesota Convenings in Bemidji and Crookston that will connect communities through local science, stories, and solutions that encompass the broad range of climate impacts that Minnesotans are seeing now.

Quick Links

Most Recent Posts

How are you teaching about climate change? Are you teaching a WSF lesson to your students? What is your favorite educational resource? Have you implemented a service learning project at your school? Do you have a twitter account where you retweet about climate change news? Any way you do it, we’d love to hear about and invite you to share it as a presenter at our Summer Institute for Climate Change Education!

Whether its attending international climate change summits abroad or encouraging green practices in Apple Valley, environmental studies teacher Craig Johnson teaches his students at the School of Environmental Studies to make their voices heard on climate change.

I’ve always pictured extreme air pollution as something that only happens in China, where coal power plants, manufacturing, and insane car traffic create suffocating smog. Not until I was diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma in 2013 did I consider the role of air pollution and air quality in my personal health. Inhalers help me manage my asthma, but I still occasionally struggle with shortness of breath. When I learned that my representative to Congress, Keith Ellison, would be hosting a forum on air pollution and asthma, I knew I wanted to attend to learn more about how I can personally campaign for cleaner air.

Students meeting with Gov. Dayton last week about clean energy. Millennials are lazy; environmentalism is only gloom and doom. These two common misperceptions get under my skin more than most. The millennials I know are social-change activists, and environmentalism is how they’re working toward securing a better future for all.

As we reflect on 2014, the hottest year on record globally, we also saw some positive climate change solutions advanced. In June, the Obama administration took its biggest step yet to address climate change by introducing regulations to limit greenhouse gases from existing power plants. And the U. S. climate movement grew in grassroots might as hundreds of thousands of people, including hundreds of Minnesotans and many of our youth, filled the streets of New York City in September demanding that world leaders act on climate.

In recent headlines: “Climate change is real, humans are mostly to blame, time is short, UN panel says…” The fourth and final volume of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) giant climate assessment offered no surprises since it combined the findings of three reports released in the past 13 months.

Mark your calendars for our new series- Dine for Climate- where we invite you to enjoy a sustainable dinner at a local restaurant, and a portion of the proceeds go to the Will Steger Foundation. When it comes to our food system, climate change solutions are close at hand!

History will be made next week in New York City with the People's Climate March on September 21st, which is building up to be the largest climate demonstration ever. The march coincides with the 69th session of the U.N. General Assembly. These discussions will set the agenda for the COP 21 international climate discussions in Paris in 2016. We are proud to be sending a delegation of ten high school youth with our Emerging Leaders staff to participate in the march and show world leaders that people want action on climate now. Click here to sponsor a youth!

Kudos to Minnesota-based General Mills for stepping up its commitments on climate change! The commitments make General Mills the first major food and beverage company to implement targets to cut emissions from across all of its operations and supply chains. General Mills Community Action is a supporter of our effective professional development offerings, including our annual Summer Institute. We thank General Mills for their leadership and support!

President Obama unveiled a new rule to confront climate change by cutting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the nation's greatest source of the heat-trapping gas. Power generation accounts for about 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA’s new rule sets overall pollution reduction targets for states and gives them considerable flexibility on how to meet those goals.